Treatment planning methods, devices and systems

Abstract

Treatment planning methods, devices and systems. One of the treatment planning methods includes displaying at least a portion of a set of lungs and one or more potential treatment regions; receiving a selection of a target treatment region from among the one or more potential treatment regions; and displaying one or more locations within the portion that are therapeutically linked to the target treatment region. Other treatment planning methods, devices and systems are included.

Description

CROSS-REFERENCE(S) TO RELATED APPLICATION(S) [0001] This application claims priority to U.S. Provisional Patent Application Ser. No. 60 / 722,176, filed Sep. 30, 2005, the entire contents of which are expressly incorporated by reference.STATEMENT REGARDING FEDERALLY SPONSORED RESEARCH [0002] This invention was made at least partially with government support under National Institute of Health grant number 1 R43 HL075953-01A1. The government has certain rights in the invention.BACKGROUND [0003] 1. Field of the Invention [0004] The present methods, devices and systems relate generally to the fields of disease assessment and treatment planning. [0005] 2. Description of Related Art [0006] Pulmonary emphysema (Russi and Weder, 2002; Sabanathan et al., 2003) is a chronic, common, debilitating, insidious, yet fatal, progressive disorder of the lungs, that is often related to smoking, but also has a strong familial association (Yim et al., 2004; Bolliger et al., 2004). A 1997 NIH health survey...

AI Technical Summary

Benefits of technology

The invention is about treatment planning methods for diseases such as emphysema and lung cancer. It can take the form of methods, devices, and systems for planning treatment. The methods involve displaying the lungs and potential treatment regions, and identifying the target treatment region. The methods also involve displaying the airway tree and a user-selectable location along the airway tree. The technical effects of the invention include improved treatment planning for lung cancer and other diseases.

Problems solved by technology

In spite of the huge impact of this disease on the community, research regarding epidemiology, or therapeutic strategies, has been slowed because of the lack of a clinical package for objectively assessing the regional characteristics of the lung tissue.

Certain quantitative approaches have utilized only single first order measures and have largely been limited to mean lung density and assessment of the location of the lower 5th percentile cut-off on the lung density histogram (plotting number of pixels vs.

Hounsfield units), and have not been available in an easily usable format.

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